Connexion With Mr King


The dispensations of Providence often seem afflictive when they happen,

and most kind and benevolent afterwards, when their design is perceived.

So it was in the case of Asaad. Being thus cast out upon the world, by

those who ought to have befriended him, he applied to Mr. King for

employment as his instructer in Syriac, and was accepted. Though a young

man, Mr. King pronounced him to be one of the most intelligent natives
/> of the country, whom he had met with on Mount Lebanon. From morning

until night, for several weeks, they were together, and hours were spent

by them, almost every day, in discussing religious subjects, and upon a

mind so candid, so shrewd, so powerful in its conceptions, and so

comprehensive in its surveys, as that of Asaad, an impression favorable

to protestant christianity could not but be made.



Having completed his engagements with Mr. King, he, at the

recommendation of Mr. Fisk, set up a school in Beyroot, for teaching

Arabic grammatically, but soon found himself obliged to relinquish it,

at the command of his patriarch. He was also forbidden, as is stated by

Mr. Bird, to give any further instruction to the Bible-men, as the

missionaries are called, because the patriarch "had received fresh

instructions from Rome to persecute these men by every means in his

power, so long as one of them should remain in the country."



When Mr. King was about to leave Syria, he wrote the farewell letter to

his friends in that country. The letter was designed, by the writer, to

show the reasons which prevented his becoming a member of the Roman

catholic church. This letter Asaad attempted to answer but his answer,

so far from being satisfactory to himself, was the occasion of raising

strong doubts in his mind, as to the general correctness of the Romish

faith.



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